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The Autobiographies of John Gorman
Why the way you tell your story matters more than your story.
Look … lemme level with you: My life’s not that fucking interesting. I write a lot about it, candidly, because those are the pieces that do the best numbers. I prefer to write about sports, science and music. But, here I am, back behind a keyboard, dipping back into the well that’s served me well for well over a year now. But not because it’s interesting. And I’m going to spend the rest of this arduous slog of an essay proving it, to prove a larger point.
So let me start with this mangled-ass thought: John Gorman, the writer, is not John Gorman. John Gorman, the writer, is the narrator of John Gorman’s life story. He’s the stenographer. He’s taking sensory notes, accumulating data, deriving insights, and spilling them in the context of widescreen essays that unearth the underlying pathologies of the human condition. That’s the narrator’s job. He’s the breadwinner of the family. And although he shares a name and body with the actual John Gorman, they are not the same and never could be. I write about things that are too raw, too personal and have the potential to inflame people close to me. If I were sensitive to criticism — especially self-criticism — I could not do this.
